John,
I like your idea of using the four digit call sign note for tactical
calls during operations. It makes perfect use of the stations call sign
while providing a tactical or special event ID. That would work very well on
events when you want to ID Resources as well as who the operators are
leaving little or no confusion. You also provide a legal & respectable call
route when going through the internet gateways and transmitting on remote
repeaters where the local repeater operator/trustee may not share such a
loose interpretation of the rules such as use of anything goes for the
digital call sign field (MYCALL).
Digression
I often feel like some operators would rather turn amateur radio into
Citizens Band (CB) where anything goes as long as you don't get caught.
Since we already allow Spanish speaking only repeaters on the air, why not
port channel 19 CB and Itinerate radios onto our local amateur airwaves too
so we can be one big happy deregulated family local and abroad. I like
listening to the lot lizards at the local truck stops occasionally. It's so
much fun to listen to them scurry about when law enforcement comes on scene.
Almost as much fun as shooting ground hogs with a .308 and a night vision
scope! Whatever happened to the good old days when kids could get dynamite
at the local COOP store to go blow out stumps. For a bigger bang add a bag
of sodium nitrate fertilizer. Fun times! We don't need to regulate common
sense any more today than we did 40 years ago. Do We!
From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of k7ve
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 12:49 PM
To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com
Subject: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
--- In dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:dstar_digital%40yahoogroups.com> , "Nate Duehr" <n...@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:18:26 -0700, "John Hays" <j...@...> said:
>
> > Here is my thought on this.
> >
> > Radios should be identified by their official callsign (and optional
> > designator character), tactical / special event callsigns can be put
> > into the 4 char comment, on voice, or in the message field for SMS.
> > Certainly, the local repeater could be allowed to pass tactical radio
> > callsigns, but across the network you are just asking for routing
> > errors if more than one station decides their callsign of the day is
> > "TAC1" or "BASE" or "EOC" (mitigated by registration, but then only
> > one station in the entire network can be "TAC1", in a dynamic
> > addressed network it would be anarchy).
>
> It hasn't been "anarchy" yet... I disagree. Yes, you have to watch out
> that you aren't using some tacticals that someone else is using on the
> same day. How often has that happened in the real world yet? :-)
>
I think in the "real world" you would find that quite often a "tactical
callsign" is in use in multiple locations. (For example, during a hurricane
in the Gulf coast, multiple EOC stations may be on D-STAR at the same time.)
In the dynamic design, you really don't have a database of who's using what
callsign (though such a design would probably have query tools) I see this
design being very dynamic with routing lookups "on demand" with caching. So
the local "gateway" sees your local special callsign and marks it as being
on local repeater "X" and reports to the central data servers, that "EOC" is
now on repeater "X" (based on the "MY EOC" field). The gateway also services
another repeater "Y" and someone now calls "UR EOC" and it routes to
repeater "X", good so far. Now another station on a remote gateway,
servicing repeater "Z", has "MY EOC" set and keys her microphone. The remote
gateway dutifully updates the central data servers that "EOC" is now on
repeater "Z" and sends an advisory notice to your local gateway of this
information. Your local gateway says, oh, "EOC" has moved, I'll update my
hashtable, now the station at repeater "X" keys with "UR EOC" and the
gateway dutifully routes it to remote repeater "Z" ... ooops!
As I said before, the radio should ID its official callsign ... solving this
problem. Certainly, my aforementioned alternatives would allow net or event
participants to still use "tactical callsigns", an accepted practice in
emergency communications. The use of "tactical callsigns" does not relieve a
station of the responsibility of identifying his transmissions with his own
callsign, so using the official station callsign in the MY field also frees
the operator from having to remember to ID when in the heat of action during
an event.
> > The filter would have to be pretty "loose" but keep it to looking
> > something like a callsign and definitely could filter certain profane
> > words.
>
> Ohh.. now you've opened Pandora's box. Is it the Network's
> responsibility to stop someone from transmitting naughty words in their
> callsign field? :-)
>
As a repeater trustee, one would have the responsibility to follow rule (in
the US) 97.113a4, if she is aware of such transmissions.
> On both of the above ... I say "no filters". Transmissions are the
> responsibility of the transmitting station... as always. Software in
> charge of "human policy" always ends up a mess, and people figure out
> ways around it anyway.
>
> Nate WY0X
I would say the filters should be available at the gateway so that a trustee
can have some management of its use, but they should be optional.
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